I’m just not concentrating today (too much coffee?) so I’m roasting the last 150 grams of Miscela d’Oro: 160C - 5m, 190C - 4m, 196C - 2m, 204C - 1m, 210C - 1m30s. I was inspired by Randy’s iRoast 2 review and Ryan’s summary of his first day with the iRoast 2. Now I’ve placed my order for a Miscela Due Doppio from Risteriet, which is 80% arabica and 20% robusta. I’ve heared robusta gives more crema, which is what I’m hunting for at the moment. The cups taste spectacular already.

Delicious, yesterdays roast turned into a cup with lots of crema. To adjust for the grind I experienced yesterday I dialled the grinder up to 6, but it went perhaps just a tad to fast through this time. But the cup is awesome: no acid, no bitterness, just lots of taste. What a lovely blend. I can’t wait until saturday when these beans should be at their peak.

Having read the iRoast 2 review at Coffee Geek I couldn’t help myself and roasted two new batches: 150g of cold Miscela d’Oro (100% arabica). One roasted at 190C - 5m, 208C - 6m, 232C - 2m30s. The second one was at 196C - 1m, 222C - 3m and 240C - 2m. With these two profiles in addition to the first one (176C - 2m, 204C - 3m, 232C - 3m), it’ll be an interesting day saturday or sunday when I get to taste all three of them.

Nothing much new with todays roast, it’s the same as two days ago, but with 45 seconds less in the last stage. My reason for this was that I found that roast to be just a little bit too burnt in smell, and I want to see what implications that has for taste. Also, these beans were directly up from the freezer, so the change for them must have been very drastic.

Regarding grinding, I’ve found this advice: The grind should be just slightly finer than sugar. Kinda sandy but you can smoosh it together with your fingers. However, doing this I get no crema. Using Lavazza or Illy (which are about grinded to about sugar size) I got no crema. Using supermarket beans I get little crema. Using fresh roasted beans I get crema, but just a couple of millimeters, not the excess of crema as seen on many videos and reported by other Pavoni users.

In other news I’m looking at tampers. It seems that there’s more to it than I thought. The La Pavoni Pro I have should probably have a 51mm tamper, but now I’ve found that they make them both flat and convex. So many choices….

Today I was rushing out of the door but had time for a cup of pre-roasted Columbia. When I came back later I tried the beans I roasted yesterday at the same grind, setting 3. To handfulls of beans resulted in a single double-basket of coffee! Yikes! Where does the rest go?!? (or, how much of my bean is really air). I should get a weigth to try this out. Still with my plastic tamper I did what I would think is a decent tamp and a few seconds later I pulled the lever. Exitement…. how much will come flowing? Nothing. Oh well, a gentle pull… nothing. A thighter squeeze… nothing. Increasing up to full body weight and finally a little bit came dripping. An early refill, press ‘til halfway, refill and full length pull with all my weight. Drop by drop, until I had a full cup. Which was still warm, btw, so nothing too wrong there. But the cup was more acidic than the previous cups I’ve had, so this was probably a too fine grind. I’ll let the beans rest for a while and see what happens.

Since I wanted more beans to test with for the light roasted one (remember I roasted just a hand and a half full of beans, so I’m running out of beans if I’ll be using that amount for a single cup). Two cups roasted at preset 1 and put into a paper bag before they go into their own box tomorrow. I have no idea what box that will be, I’m quickly running out of boxes. I’ll probably throw away some more of that pre-grinded coffee.